Two-Heel Drive

Barb Egbert, my through-hiking former co-worker, has a couple more bookstore events coming up (like a twit I missed one the other day in Fremont) focusing on “Zero Days,” her book about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2004 with her husband and 10-year-old daughter.

• 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 8, at the REI in Concord,
• 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 10, at Books Inc., 1344 Park Street, Alameda.

These are always worth a stop if it’s in your neighborhood.

Dave and Cindy Peters have already logged their first 100 miles from the wall at Campo on the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re now calling themselves Zelda and Tarzan. How Dave got dubbed:

At Scissors Crossing we stopped to rest and make a decision whether to proceed up a hot dry stretch through the San Felipe Hills or to wait it out until early morning when it is cool.

While here at Scissors Crossing another hiker named Zoner gave David his trail name. David was dubbed Tarzan because of the Cheetah gaiters he wears along with his jungle shirt and hat. I don’t want to be Jane because David would have an excuse to drag me around so we’ll wait to see what comes about for me.

Cindy did the wise thing: chose one before some embarrassing trail faux pas did the deed for her:

Last night we had several hikers congratulate us on our 24 mile day as we came into camp at Barrel Springs. Nomad, who is a two-time AT thru-hiker, suggested that my trail name should be Wonder Woman or Super Woman, but neither one hit the spot for me. The next morning the name Zelda pop into mind, which I thought was consistent with the other names mentioned. My sons both love the game, The Legend of Zelda. I ran it by some other hikers and they thought it was perfect. I love it too!

So, Tarzan and Zelda made it to Warner Springs resort and it is paradise. The soap smells so good. And a thru hiker that lives near here named Warner Springs Monty heard about my blisters through trail talk and brought me some Epsom salts to our room. What a great trail angel!

As long as I’m on the subject of local through-hikers, I’ve been meaning to mention one I found last week: JJ, a Bay Area guy who says he used to weigh 400 pounds (down to 290 at last count, as I recall). A briefing from his first day out:

Knees good. Tired. It is much further from Hauser Creek this year than four years ago. And more bicycles. I counted 12 between Campo and Hauser Creek.

Lots of people already on the trail. I’m off for a shower after a
quart of chocolate milk and a quart of cranberry juice.

More later.

Lots of good stuff at JJ’s web site, Old Man Walking, which won’t have many updates for the next few months while he’s working his way north (the The Trail Journals link above should have them, though).

Jellybean, from Mile 43 of the Pacific Crest trail:

I was sitting on a rock out cropping yesterday to air my feet and eat a snack. I could see down into the valley and interstate 8. I was thinking Wow! Its so much better to be sitting here looking at the trucks go by than it is to be in a truck watching the mountains go by!

Priceless because Jellybean Jean is a long-haul trucker half the year, and a through-hiker the rest. Previous Jellybean journals: 2002 PCT | 2005 AT | 2006 AT | 2007 AT

I went trolling for interesting candidates to follow for this hiking season. I was hoping to find some Bay Area types who are doing the trail this year (I did, but I’ll get back to that) but one journal stopped me in my tracks. It belongs to Paul Sandall, whose daughter, Emily Sandall, died on Half Dome at Yosemite on Nov. 8, 2006 (my birthday, no less). From Paul’s first entry:

Years ago I bought Ray Jardine’s book, The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker’s Handbook (2nd edition, 1996). It sat on the bookshelf and my oldest daughter, Emily, borrowed it. She was working at Voyager Outward Bound in Red Lodge, MT, at the time, otherwise living in Missoula, MT. She wanted to hike it someday with a friend, preferably male, certainly not her father. But, yes, I had always, or at least since 1996 or so, been intrigued with the trail myself.

I come to the trail now, out of need, out of hope, looking for some measure of healing, some measure of community with people like Emily, looking for strength, wisdom, but mostly hope.

You see, Emily died in a hiking accident in Yosemite, November, 2006 at the age of 25 and our world has since been turned asunder. So the trail is a thread on which to start mending the rip, or perhaps find some temporary patch.

I hike to honor my daughter, to do something she was not able to do herself, to look for her spirit in the wilderness, to hear her joyful laugh in the wind, to meet her again.

Paul is of retirement age so he’s packing in the work and planning to head up from Campo in early May. His family has set up a foundation for Emily, who sounds like one of those people the outdoors universe could least afford to lose. So, good luck, Paul. This online discussion thread has more on Emily’s accident.

As to local folks, David and Cindy Peters are gearing up for the big walk. Jeff Singewald, Elevator from ‘06, is their transcriber. If you know of anybody other locals planning a through-hike, let me know.

The Mercury News has posted my review of Barbara Egbert’s “Zero Days,” which recounts her 2004 Pacific Crest Trail through-hike with her husband and 10-year-old daughter. Excerpt:

Egbert and Chambers, who live in Sunol, started taking their daughter on backpacking trips before she was old enough to walk. By the time Mary started out on the 2,650-mile PCT trek, she had already hiked all 165 miles of the Tahoe Rim Trail. Chambers also is a veteran rock climber and mountaineer.

Egbert’s first-person prose is plain-spoken and unpretentious. It’s not the equal of, say, Bill Bryson’s, whose “A Walk in the Woods” is a classic, antic tale of failing to through-hike the Appalachian Trail. But Egbert, a Mercury News copy editor, has success on her side, having hiked all but a couple hundred miles of the PCT (medical issues forced her off the trail for a few weeks) and finishing the trek in Canada with husband and child.

Between 200 and 300 hardy backpackers try to through-hike the PCT every year. Most start in April or early May at Campo, on the U.S-Mexico border, and head north toward Manning Provincial Park in British

Columbia (they rest on “zero” days, when they log no miles). Around 50 to 60 finish.

Along the way they, usually adopt descriptive trail names: Chambers became “Captain Bligh,” leader and navigator; Egbert was “Nelly Bly,” the famed 19th-century true-life storyteller; and Mary was “Scrambler,” adept at crawling over rocks and other trail-side attractions.

Wilderness Press page for the book is here. Barb & family have a site here.

So 4WheelBob is not the only chaser-of-remarkable-firsts in my acquaintance. It so happens that a woman I work with hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2004 with her 10-year-old daughter, the youngest ever to hike the whole trail.

Barb Egbert is a copy editor at the Mercury News who has just finished writing “Zero Days,” a Wilderness Press title accounting her six-month sojourn with her daughter, Mary, and her husband, Gary, in the spring/summer/fall of 2004. If you were on the trail that season, you might recall their trail handles: Nelly Bly, Scrambler and Captain Bligh.

Our books editor left a copy of the book on my desk last week, and I spent several days rationalizing why I should blow off reviewing it for the paper. What if I have to say something unkind about a co-worker’s book? It’s like saying something bad about their kids, in print no less.

But the books editor promised to actually pay me for writing the review, which would pay for many pairs of high-tech hiking socks, so I figured, what the heck

The book’s only about 180 pages so it shouldn’t take too long to read, but posting may be light around here in the next few days, because, well, people become authors because it’s easier than becoming book reviewers.

The many-tattooed, multiply-pierced PCT thru-hiker concedes she won’t break the speed record she was shooting for, but she’s still down for the whole 2600 miles:

I talked to Tattoo Joe and we both know we won’t be able to get the speed records that we were trying for. We decided that we will team up in 2009 and give the record another try. I am still going to try for the women’s record of 91 days but it doesn’t matter how long it takes me, I am going to finish. Some hikers were saying that people who try for records usually quit if they can’t get the record. NOT ME, I am out here until the end!

She’s gone over 500 miles in 24 days, which ain’t too shabby, considering the heat and dryness of the So-Cal desert.

(Horny teen-aged boys and the entire staff of GoBlog will appreciate this post in which Catra presses the flesh while a hulking bearded guy leers.)

Her husband posted this on her PCT trail journal:

Those of you following Gesh’s or Manynames Tom’s journals may have learned that Sandals became quite ill on the trail on Sunday evening, and had to be evacuated on Monday morning. She is now currently in the hospital in Bakersfield, is out of danger, is expected to make a full recovery –and has already started talking about how to get back on the trail.

To Manynames Tom –who found Sandals on Sunday evening, stayed with her the entire night, hiked as many as 8 extra miles, first to replenish her water supply, and then to contact 911 and guide the rescue team back to where she was located– words cannot adequately express our gratitude for the assistance rendered –it was, quite literally, a lifesaver. Thanks also to Marmot, who also interrupted her hike for several hours to stay with Sandals while Manynames Tom went for help.

Gesh’s account is here.

The Tehachapi Mountain Range allows a single day crossing, and the
descent leads through a huge windfarm, giant turbines buzzing above. We
couldn’t help but notice other activity in the sky, a rescue helicopter
had circled much of the day. Arriving at the highway, we found a trail
register where Out of Bounds relayed that they were looking for Sandals,
a woman we’ve met off and on. The details were sketchy, and we all grew
very concerned.
The hitch into Mojave was a rough one. Standing beside the blazing
asphalt for over an hour, finally a woman stopped and offered a ride. She
was a trail angel, had actually been going the opposite direction, but
was willing to turn around and take us the twelve miles in to the city
of Mojave. Here, at the Motel 6, we caught up with Out of Bounds and
got the scoop on Sandals. Apparently Many Names had found her the night
before, vomiting and dehydrated. They think she might have had food
poisoning. He stayed with her through the night and went for help this
morning. She is alright now, recovering at a local hospital. That came as
a huge relief, and is a perfect example of how we do look out for each
other out here. Sandals, if you read this, keep your head up and get
better soon. We all hope to see you down the line.

Glad to see all’s going well. After following this year’s desert travails it amazes me anybody gets on the trail south of Kennedy Meadows, much less stays on it for 700 miles.

Katie Worth, from mile 367.

Maybe I can find a way to blame McDonalds for the forest fire I
started today, too. Hmm, like maybe one of the 4,000 cows that
contributed to my burger yesterday was fed a hormone that
interacted with a random chemical in my brain to create the
neurotoxin Moronicus Humongous, which jumped right in
the middle of two otherwise-functional neurons and decided to
light my stove on a breezy, loamy hillside.

There were a bunch of us sitting there above a spring after the
long climb of the day, and I was craving something that was not
Oreos, so I lit my alcohol stove, intending to make myself some
couscous Phoebe had sent me in her package. We were all chatting
away, but the instant I lit the stove, Noodlehead Angelhair
looked over and said, “That looks a little tippy.” I could only
agree with her, but once you light an alcohol stove, you can’t
really extinguish it or move it, so I tried to gingerly place
the pot on the stove, and when I let go the whole stove, flames
and all, went over and rolled down the hill. Angelhair leapt up
and started stomping the fire out, and I doused it with all this
spring water I’d just lugged a quarter mile up
a steep hill.

Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, it only lit a
few needles on fire and they were extinguished and everything
was fine. Everything, that is, but me, because my soul was dying
an anguished death of mortification, having stunned myself with
a
whole new level of stupidity. I swear, you could tie my head to
a string and it would float on away, maybe accidentally bumping
into the Hindenburg and lighting it on fire en route. I’m just
glad I already have a trail name because otherwise I’d get
Smokey’s Nemesis or something.

The next several entries after this one are really great, by the way … Katie seems to be the Emerging Voice of the Trail this year.

Remember Erik the Invisible Hiker? The trail seems to be mellowing him, if this post is any indication:

As we walked along the aqueduct a group approached from the rear which turned out to be Sage, Burning Man, Tony, Nadine and their dog. We decided to organize an impromputu hiker race by drawing Start and Finish lines in the dirt as we passed. We then stood at the Finish line and, after placing bets on the winner, began cheering for our hikers. When they reached the Start line and realized what was going on Sage broke out running and won the race, winning the bet for me since I had chosen her. This led to a series of increasingly strange bets being placed throughout the night including which side of the road the dog would poop on first. Then Bull found a CD in the dirt which lead to a guessing game to determine what it was, I chose random songs from my MP3 player to guess at, then played a game where we tried to link actors together through movies they starred in.

I camped right on top of the aqueduct with the sound of thousands of gallons of water rushing below. This was one of my favorite days on the trail yet and it had nothing to do with the trail itself. The kind of goofy, carefree interaction with people I had tonight is what I have missed since becoming an adult, when everyone started acting so serious all the time.

Erik was like the king of all seriousness in his blog posts before the hike started, so it’s good see him kicking back.